Christmas in New Jersey

We flew to Newark airport on Christmas Eve. The flight went well until we got to the luggage carousel and waited and waited. All luggage had been delivered and ours wasn't amongst it. We weren't the only ones. It seemed to be everyone who had transferred at Amsterdam from the Manchester flight were in the same position. Families facing Christmas without presents were becoming strained. So we remained cool and were careful not to lose our temper with the stressed luggage claims woman. So having given our details on the bags, we were joined by my parents who had been in New Jersey for a week already.

We got the two of us added to the list of drivers for the parents' hire car and then set off to the hotel. The so-called two room suite, is a bit small for the four of us, but we don't expect to spend a lot of time there.

Via a call at McCaffrey's (our first US mall but quite a modest sized one, we went to our friends: Mike; Aleta; Galen; and Maren. There we had a marvellous Bouillabaisse meal. Lan did much of the cooking to the directions of Mike. Also present are: Gitta; Bryan; Lesley; Helen; Emma, Sarah and Nicholas.

Christmas day we marked by going to the Washington Crossing State Park, to see a re-enactment of the historic event 229 years ago to the day, when Washington led a force across the Delaware, in the snow to attack Trenton 10 miles march further on. The attack caught the Hessian troops (German mercenaries) by surprise and gave an enormous morale boost to the 6 month old revolution which was flagging after a series of failures. This success led on to a series victories.

Then back to our friends, for a traditional British Christmas meal.



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